


Put A Little Love on Me

by b3tty



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1930s, Artist Steve Rogers, As in it is mentioned briefly, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26881951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b3tty/pseuds/b3tty
Summary: Bucky finds Steve's sketchbook and the pictures aren't exactly what he expected.Set in late 1930s/early 1940s.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 5
Kudos: 101





	Put A Little Love on Me

‘Steve?’ Bucky calls before he’s even in the door. There’s really no need to shout seeing as the apartment is roughly the size of a broom closet, but he does anyway, more out of habit than necessity.

There’s no reply. It isn’t unusual for Steve to be out, though seeing as the sun is going down it seems likely that he’s causing trouble and Bucky’s heart sinks. He’s tired from working all day and the summer makes the docks stink even more than normal. Most of his body tells him to get in the shower and go to bed, but Bucky knows that isn’t possible. Steve is a little shit, and he’s a little shit that is going to stagger home half conscious with blood ruining yet another of his shirts if Bucky doesn’t get there first. He’d like to think Steve is just out at the shops, or that maybe he’s gone on a date to the pictures, but the idea of either of those being the case is laughable.

Bucky sighs and swears to himself in the doorway. He surveys the room with wistful eyes and begins preparing a suitable lecture to give his best friend when he inevitably spends the rest of the evening holding a wet rag to a bloody nose. The usual twang of anxiety churns his stomach as he thinks about it. Bucky must have told Steve a thousand times to just stay out of trouble, and Steve must have scowled back a thousand times more. It’s just what they do.

He’s about to leave when something catches his eye. On the table, which is held up on one side by a stack of newspapers and magazines, is Steve’s sketchbook. It’s open on a page which almost glows in the golden light of the summer evening. A collection of pencils sits beside it like an audience. Steve rarely lets Bucky see what he’s drawing, but he knows Steve is good. Really good. Bucky has been quietly leaving pamphlets for art schools around the apartment, only to find them used to start the gas stove or hold steady another piece of furniture.

From across the room, Bucky can’t make out the picture on the page, but he lets curiosity get the better of him and steps closer. The floorboards squeak as though shocked at his presence. Bucky stares at the page and it stares back. The room feels suddenly unbearably hot. It’s him, halfway to a laugh, his head thrown back a little and eyes creasing at the corners. There’s no colour on the sketch yet, but the likeness is clear. Steve is really good. The picture seems almost in motion, as if Bucky can hear his own laugh from the page; see his own reflection so jovial in the evening light.

His cheeks flush pink. Bucky used to always ask Steve to draw him when they were kids, to a point where every time he asked Steve would draw something completely lude, turning it around to show with a flourish that made Bucky double over in shocked laughter. Another floorboard creaks and there’s a thick guilt in Bucky’s heart for even looking at the drawing. It feels personal, as though the book is naked and ashamed of its contents.

Before he knows what he is doing, Bucky has turned the page backwards. The paper is smooth ad soft like skin and it only adds to the feeling of betrayal mounting in his mind. But the feeling is replaced by a heart-skipping shock. The page before is him again, only this time he’s looking far off the page, his eyes coloured with what seems like a hundred shades of blue and grey. Another page. Another depiction of him standing at their kitchen stove, a kettle balanced in one hand, a mug Bucky knows has a chip in it grasped in the other. Another page. And another. And another.

‘Fuck,’ His hands are trembling when he stops on a page fairly near the cover of the book. This one is different. It’s still him, though only half of his face is profiled, the page instead paying homage to his body. The lines twist and bend around his torso, the angle showing muscles on his back Bucky didn’t even know he had until now. It’s a study of his form, completely bare, and the starkness of the image, despite its beauty, leaves a biting sickness in Bucky’s throat.

Sweat trickles down his back and soaks into his vest. His chest is tight, heartbeat loud and fast like a drum. This is wrong. His hands drop the pages as if they’re on fire and he feels himself move towards the door on autopilot. He has to find Steve, now more than ever. Not that he knows what to say, or how to feel. Bucky’s whole world revolves around Steve and it’s always been that way as far as he can remember. The sun moves around them, and their shoebox apartment and cracked windowpanes and he loves it like that. Nothing is ever as bright as the evenings spent with Steve sat on the fire escape taking turns to ask each other questions about nothing and everything, but this? This is another step. This is illegal.

He’s halfway down the metal steps that wrap around the building when Steve begins climbing them. He’s holding his side and Bucky can already see a smear of blood on his cheek. It doesn’t feel as scary now. Somehow, the world doesn’t seem quite as scary as the page currently displayed to the kitchen three metres away.

‘Buck, hi,’ Steve says when he looks up, frowning a little at Bucky’s wide eyes and pink cheeks.

‘What’s the damage this time?’ Bucky surprises himself by slipping into the usual routine. It’s not a bad one, there’s a split lip and a black eye but it’s nothing compared to some of the other nights. Steve tries to smile but winces in pain and Bucky feels a pang of worry. His role on the Earth seems to be to take away as much of Steve’s pain as possible and, now he’s thinking about it, that isn’t half bad.

‘You just get back?’ Steve asks, words slurred slightly by the swelling of his lip. He pushes the door open with his shoulder and Bucky’s breath falls dead in his lungs. He watches Steve see the sketchbook how he left it. He watches the colour drain completely from his face, his skin matching the grey of his shirt.

‘Steve,’ Bucky says to fill the silence, but he has nothing planned. He shuts the door behind them and the room feels stiflingly small. He stops himself looking at his own body on the page.

Steve, in one small, mouse-like movement, closes the book and slides it into a drawer with a clunk. He doesn’t meet Bucky’s eyes, instead choosing a particular floorboard to study. The purpling of a bruise is beginning to show around his eyebrow and Bucky feels a desperate urge to put ice on it. He wants Steve to sit down and let himself be cared for, but this doesn’t feel like the place where that happens anymore. It feels dirty.

‘What do you want me to say?’ Steve asks the floor. His hair is messy and dirty, Bucky suspects from the floor of some backstreet across town. It hurts his heart to imagine Steve there, curled up, too proud to surrender but too weak to do anything but let the pain in.

‘Well,’ Bucky takes a step towards him. He isn’t mad at Steve. He isn’t upset or confused or curious. He wants Steve, in some sick way, to tell him exactly why there’s a book full of pictures of him and he wants Steve to let him hold him and tell him it’s okay. Something deep inside him shifts and Bucky has a suspicious feeling it’s guilt.

‘Guess there’s no hiding from it.’ Steve looks up then, his eyes filled with sadness but his body tense with anger. For a second, Bucky thinks he’s about to punch him, but words hit him instead, ‘I’m in love with you. Hell, Buck I’ve been in love with you for a while. And I know it’s wrong, I know I’m perverted and dirty and you could have me arrested if you wanted, but it’s the truth. You’re my world, I’d do anything for you Buck I’d die for you if I had to. I wake up every day and look at you and I feel like the luckiest guy on the whole fucking planet to have you here with me.’

He pauses for a second and puts a thumb gingerly to his lips, wiping blood away,

‘Though I guess that’s gone now.’

Steve sits down on one of the two chairs. The wood on wood makes a crude scraping noise that seems to be a fitting finale to his words. Bucky can only stare. Something roots him to the spot, though he’s not sure whether it’s shock or fear or love. Because he does love Steve, doesn’t he? That’s why when Dot kissed him two years ago he felt nothing but a sick feeling in the deepest depth of his stomach. That’s why when a girl in the toilets of the dance hall stuck her hand down his pants last month he had to pretend it was the alcohol that stopped him getting hard. That’s why every time he gets home he calls for Steve and feels a little empty when there’s no reply. The world _does_ revolve around them because Steve _is_ his world.

The silence in the apartment is thick, though Bucky is sure Steve can hear his heartbeat because it’s pounding in his ears incessantly. A weighty guilt sits on Bucky’s heart. He tries not to think about what his father would say if he could split his head open and look inside or about every time the kids at school called Steve a fag and Bucky bit his tongue and held Steve’s shaking shoulders until they’d gone. Bucky moves slowly to the freezer and pulls out a bag of ice. He takes a towel hanging off the sink head and wraps the bag methodically in the material. He bends down so he’s resting on one knee beside Steve and, with the softness of a feather, presses the ice to the side of Steve’s face.

They stay like that for a while, until Bucky takes his other hand and cups Steve’s unscathed cheek in it, turning those watery blue eyes to look at him. The feeling in his chest lifts a little with the contact and the universe feels like every star has aligned. The room is gloomy now and the shadows cast deep shadows over the curve of Steve’s face. A small but strong hand reaches up to hold Bucky’s own and neither of them bat an eyelid at the sticky sweat coating their palms.

‘It hasn’t gone Stevie.’ Bucky whispers into the space between them. The ice drops a tear of water onto the towel, ‘I’ll never go.’

He kisses him without thinking. It feels like the most natural thing in the world. Steve’s lips are puffy from the bruising and Bucky feels him tense a little with the pain, but it’s warm and soft and nothing like when Bucky kissed Dot or any of the other girls whose names he’s forgotten. It feels like coming home should feel and it isn’t until they’ve drawn apart and Steve’s hand drops to his lap that Bucky even registers that what they’ve just done would not only put him out of a job, but labels them criminals.

‘You’ll have to let me know when to pose next time,’ Bucky says, and before he can straighten up, Steve is kissing him again.

Bucky’s hand lets go of the ice and it falls to the floor with a thud. He kisses Steve harder than he’s ever imagined kissing before. Steve’s hands fall naturally into Bucky’s hair and then to the back of his neck, tracing the cotton of his vest with electric fingertips. If it’s hurting Steve, he doesn’t show it, and he stands up without letting their lips come apart. A space in Bucky’s chest seems to open up, as though he’s breathing properly for the first time.

They fall, messily and all at once, into the tiny bedroom of the apartment they’ve shared for years and tonight, it feels like a palace. Bucky doesn’t even realise he’s yet to shower until they’re done and for him, that’s all the confirmation he needs that Steve, and this crappy Brooklyn apartment, and the smell of the docks in his hair and his clothes – that’s all the world he needs.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this while listening to the song Put a Little Love on Me by Niall Horan (hence the title) and feel I owe it some credit for the inspiration! I love to write to a certain song and this one definitely helped set the mood/tone for this work. Hope you all enjoy it!


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